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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29574402">What I've Always Been</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilbob/pseuds/Evilbob'>Evilbob</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Planet To Save Somewhere [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Deaf Character, Fade to Black, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sign Language, cybernetic bonding, feelings are terrible</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:13:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29574402</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilbob/pseuds/Evilbob</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither our Jedi or Theron can sleep, so when Theron breaks into the Commander's quarters they get to talking. And as Master Yoda never said, "talking leads to feelings, and feelings lead to crying."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kira Carsen/Male Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython, Male Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython/Theron Shan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Planet To Save Somewhere [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148987</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What I've Always Been</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As usual I was laying in bed, not sleeping. This end of the base would be quiet even with my implants on, with the heavy rock walls muffling any sounds of ship traffic. So it wasn’t noise keeping me awake. Tonight my mind kept coming up with things I should be doing instead of laying in bed, things like combing the galaxy for Kira, or coming up with a more solid plan to stop the Eternal Fleet.<br/>
I almost missed the vibration of the door panel activating.<br/>
Breathe.<br/>
I turned one of my implants back on.<br/>
Focus.<br/>
Reach out with the Force.<br/>
“Theron?”<br/>
“Hey. I thought you might still be awake. I wanted to come by and...” he trailed off.<br/>
I sat up to look at him. There was a good chance that he had also been laying in bed coming up with impossible missions that he should be out doing instead of sleeping. I patted the bed next to me.<br/>
“I thought maybe we could talk.”<br/>
“About what? Is something bothering you?”<br/>
He crossed the room and made his way up the few stairs that separated the bedroom from the rest of my quarters.<br/>
“No. Not really. Just couldn’t sleep. Figured we could swap stories or at least...”<br/>
I picked up the thread as he trailed off, “Not be alone.”<br/>
“Yeah. That sounds nice. Just spend some time together not on a mission.”<br/>
“Or as a stolen night between missions in some SIS safehouse?”<br/>
“Some of those were fun.”<br/>
“Yeah they were. But I like the idea of just being with you. And not...”<br/>
This time he picked up for me, “having to sneak out in the morning.”<br/>
“Exactly.”<br/>
I shifted over on the bed and made room for him next to me. He sat on the edge for a minute, unlacing his boots, kicking them off in his usual haphazard way and I thought I could sense a smile. He removed his red jacket and tossed it across the room to drape over the arm of a chair. Then he swung his legs up onto the bed and laid down next to me, his head propped up on a hand. I slouched back down and rolled to my side to look at him.<br/>
It looked like one of his implants was off, and I wondered if he switched them off at night like I did. Reaching out I stroked his eyebrow with my thumb.<br/>
“Do you turn these off when it’s time to sleep?”<br/>
“The main one, I do. The conditional response implant, for emergency contact, that one stays on all the time. Don’t want to get caught unaware. How about you?”<br/>
I thumbed behind my left ear, “This one’s off, but before you came in they were both off. The room’s quiet enough I could leave them on to sleep. But at this point it’s habit.”<br/>
“I guess I never thought about the fact that you could just tune out a portion of the world by turning them off.”<br/>
“Same with you.”<br/>
“Yeah but mine are like extra senses and,” he waves his left hand, “a messaging system. Totally a thing I could live without. Not that I want to, I am way too used to having them.”<br/>
“I can live without mine too. I did for years. The force helped make up for a lot of what I was missing. I knew you were at the door without them.”<br/>
“The force sure does make sneaking up on people hard.”<br/>
I chuckled, “Next time I could act surprised.”<br/>
He smiles, one of those deep, full body smiles, and I want to kiss him. Reaching behind my ear, he strokes just around one of my implants, “How old were you when you got them?”<br/>
“About ten, just before I went to study with my first master.”<br/>
“Was getting sound back weird?”<br/>
“I wasn’t getting it back.”<br/>
“You weren’t?”<br/>
“Nope. I was getting it for the first time. It was kind of terrible for a while. Interesting, and new and exciting, but also awful. Master Arlos knew sign so I was able to take my time getting used to them.”<br/>
“I guess I always just thought you had lost your hearing.”<br/>
“I think a lot of people think that. But I also think people think I keep them on a lot more than I do.”<br/>
He gave me that smile he got when his mind was up to something, “Do you turn them off in boring department meetings?”<br/>
“What, no. I mean I could probably manage with everyone except Tee-Seven, no lips to read. But no, I turn them off when I’m in the field sometimes, well a lot of the time. Sometimes it’s still too much, you know?”<br/>
“I think so. But what about when we patch through a message. How do you never seem to miss those?”<br/>
I chuckled, “Jedi powers.”<br/>
“Bantha-shit.”<br/>
“It could be.”<br/>
He squinted his eyes at me and after a moment, “You have it set to give you a vibration and switch on if a message is coming through don’t you?”<br/>
“You used yours to scan for that didn’t you?”<br/>
“No! Well, yes. But just to confirm it. It makes sense now that I stop to think about it.”<br/>
“I can turn that off too. Which I do when I meditate most of the time. It makes me feel, fully me.”<br/>
“Did you not want them?”<br/>
“No, I think I did. I don’t regret it overall. But I do feel like I’ve had to tuck away part of me sometimes.”<br/>
“You lip read?”<br/>
“And sign.”<br/>
“That’s what your hands are doing when you talk to people sometimes isn’t it?”<br/>
“Yeah. Another habit. If I catch myself I either shrink the motions or stop. With everything else going on, it feels like too much of a conversation.”<br/>
“Could you teach me?”<br/>
“Which one?”<br/>
“Sign? Then you could be all you when it’s us.”<br/>
I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to say.<br/>
“Babe, did I say something wrong? You’re crying.”<br/>
“I haven’t had anyone to. To...” I reflexively clenched and opened my hands several times, “like that for such a long time. Master Orgus Din didn’t sign, and we weren’t together or in the same places long enough for him to learn.”<br/>
He reached out and took my hand, “You have let me be me, in all my messy glory, when we’re together. You deserve the same,” he said bringing my hands to his lips and kissing the knuckles.<br/>
“It’ll take a while.”<br/>
“I’m not going anywhere. Can we start with something simple?”<br/>
“Right now?”<br/>
“Yeah. How do I sign your name?”<br/>
***<br/>
My mind was flooded with memories. I was taken back to my time as a youngling. Our cohort and our teachers all learned sign so that I wouldn’t be left out of lessons, or have to be taught solo. I hadn’t known sign before coming to the temple, so I was overwhelmed with new people, learning about the force, and now language. But making friends was the most magical experience. And we had this common language that not everyone else had, and we had ways of making it ours.<br/>
I could still see how Channa would accent her signs with her lekku, merging our signs with Twi'lek style. Dacken introduced a percussive element to many of our signs for emphasis. We would hit our hands to different parts of our chest or arms as part of a sign’s movement, and with us being force sensitive, augment the sign so that the rest of us caught the force wave as almost a punctuation.<br/>
Each of us could spell the other’s names, but when we were, maybe six, all very fluent, and very close, we decided that we needed better name signs. The rest of the cohort got together and would come up with ideas and decide on your sign name. It wasn’t something you got a say in. We thought we were being very fancy. It took weeks, but we poured our hearts into the process. These were gifts and we wanted them to be perfect.<br/>
We snuck outside one night, to a meditation circle to give each other our new names. Each going around the circle and giving the name to the next person. Then signing it all together and laughing. We absolutely got caught.<br/>
Master Qui-Xot was very stern, and we were all lectured about sneaking out and responsibility. But when she found out what we were doing she softened quite a bit. We didn’t know it when we had started, but giving sign names to those close to you was traditional in other signing communities. We had developed these names and how to give them almost as she would have instructed us, the following season. We were in significantly less trouble after that. But between the late night ‘ceremony’ and it’s following lecture, the next morning came very early for a pack of six year olds.<br/>
***<br/>
Theron was still holding my hand and gazing intently at me.<br/>
“Sorry, got lost in a memory there for a moment. I can show you my name… Both of them.”<br/>
“Both?”<br/>
I pulled my hand back, and spelled out my name with my fingers, “This is how you spell it O-D-Y-N-K.”<br/>
“Ok, I knew your hands were fast, but,” he grinned mischievously, “You’re going to have to slow down, this is my first time.”<br/>
I signed the letters again, this time slower, enunciating with my fingers.<br/>
“How do you show the little hitch in speech between the n and the k?”<br/>
“I usually don’t. It’s not really an important enough part of my name to bother. Not like it was with Isma’ln. If you just spell that one out,” I finger spelled just the letters, “it’s the same as a particularly vicious slur in Rodian. So we twist the hand on the a, and then twist it back while making the l. You make it smooth but pronounced and it gives that separation.”<br/>
“Can I try to spell it along with you?”<br/>
“Of course.”<br/>
We spent a few minutes silently spelling my name back and forth, me gently helping move his fingers to the right position on the k.<br/>
“This is absolutely going to require practice.”<br/>
“All languages do.”<br/>
“Oh certainly. I didn’t mean that to come off sounding like I expected it to be easy,” he paused for a deep breath, “I’m willing to put in the work.”<br/>
“You’re sweet.”<br/>
“Nah, I’m a salty mess. But I try,” and before I could interrupt, “so this second name?”<br/>
“This is the name my cohort made me when we younglings. It’s kind of funny now. But it’s also, it’s just really... me,” I sat up, “this one is hard to do on your side,” I made my left hand into a d, and the right into a k, with the letters made I brought my arms up into an x in front of myself, tapping my wrists together, right hand over left.<br/>
“That is quite a bit shorter than spelling it every time. Why is it funny? Just because you got it as a youngling?”<br/>
I made my hands flat and repeated the crossing and tapping motion, “This is the sign for defend.”<br/>
“Oh. Your friends sure had you pegged.”<br/>
“Yeah. I wonder sometimes which was the influence on the other. Did they see it even when we were so young? Or did I just grow into my name.”<br/>
Theron sat up, struggled a little getting the d shaped correctly with his non-dominant hand but getting the k on his first try, and then said my name, for the first time anyone had, since before I arrived on Tython.<br/>
He uncrossed his arms and took my face in his hands. They were soft, callused in places from his blaster, but warm and gentle, “Babe, you’re crying again. Are you ok?”<br/>
“Commander of the Alliance, and here I am crying over you saying my real name.”<br/>
“Oh.”<br/>
“Yeah, I guess I hadn’t really put it in those terms myself until now. But maybe because of how it was crafted just for me, I think it does. It really feels like my true name. Even though it’s essentially the same as my birth name.”<br/>
“When was the last time...”<br/>
“Before I went to Tython and Master Orgus Din took me as his padawan.”<br/>
“Oh.”<br/>
“Theron, my heart hurts.”<br/>
“Come here,” he pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me as I cried.<br/>
I cried for all of my lost friends. I cried for all the dead, who I couldn’t save on either side. I cried for the lost time. The five years of being poisoned and mentally tortured, the six years of what felt like one long fight before that. I cried for my dead Master, for my missing wife. And because I wanted things to be better, but they weren’t. I cried for spending this long without thinking to ask anyone to get to know me. And I cried because I was happy, because this man holding me had taken that step.<br/>
I don’t know how long I cried, my head pressed into Theron’s chest, “Thank you,” I said between hitched breaths.<br/>
He kissed my forehead, “Do you want to try and get some sleep?”<br/>
“I probably should, otherwise Lana will never let me hear the end of it, me showing up to the briefing with puffy eyes.”<br/>
“Do you want company?”<br/>
“That would be really nice. But no sneaking out in the morning.”<br/>
“Are you sure? People talk.”<br/>
“Let them. I’m tired of not being me.”<br/>
Another kiss on my forehead as he got up and went to the ‘fresher, coming back with a glass of water, “Drink this, it’ll make you feel better.”<br/>
I took the glass and Theron undressed. He had gotten down to his underwear when I remembered something I had been meaning to ask for some time.<br/>
“Who’s Teff’ith?”<br/>
Theron looked at me like a Tauntaun caught in landing lights, “Uh, I’m sorry, what?”<br/>
“I got a message from a Teff’ith about you a few days ago. It was delivered extremely late, the date stamp shows it was sent around the time we left Mannan.”<br/>
“Hooooooboy,” Theron said, running his fingers through his hair, “You should get some sleep and then we can talk about that walking disaster over caf in the morning.”<br/>
I raised an eyebrow, “Ok, but I’m holding you to that.”<br/>
He smiled as he crawled under the sheets, pulling me close, “I’ll bring the caf, you be ready to teach me to sign ‘pain in the ass’.”<br/>
“Deal.”<br/>
“Good-night.”<br/>
“Yeah it was,” I leaned in and kissed him, his lips were soft and warm and he tasted just a little of meiloorun.<br/>
He stroked behind my ear, “You can turn this off, just be you.”<br/>
“But what if...”<br/>
He cut me off, “Nope, starting now, we figure it out. When it’s just us, you can just be you, whoever you want that to be. And if that means lip reading until I get the hang of sign, and me needing to touch you more. That’s not a bad thing.”<br/>
“I love you Theron.”<br/>
“I love you too,” his arms moved and I could tell he was signing my name across his chest.<br/>
I thumbed off the implant, leaving the incoming communication setting on, just in case and turned my attention back to Theron, “Let’s spend a little time without words.”<br/>
He smiled, and pulled his lips inward, in that way he did to wet them without sticking his tongue out. I put my hand on the back of his head and pulled him close, kissing him deeply. I could feel the sigh he let out in little vibrations through my cheeks and chest.<br/>
I remembered the first time I kissed Kira, and the flush of feelings that ran through my body. This was like that, even though Theron and I had kissed many times before. But this time it was deeper, it resonated somewhere in my core in a way I had never felt before. My skin was alive and the force was more distinct than I had felt it in years.<br/>
With my eyes closed I let my hands move around his body, letting the force guide me. Allowing it to replace both my eyes and implants. It let me see Theron in a way I had never experienced him before. I ran my hand over his hip bringing it around to the small of his back. He was kissing my neck as I pulled him closer.<br/>
I felt him whisper into my jaw, “Please.”<br/>
And in that moment I didn’t think I could deny him anything in the galaxy.<br/>
It wasn’t like I was planning on getting much sleep tonight anyway.</p>
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